Everyday Aesthetics

David Cooper reviews Yuriko Saito’s recent Everyday Aesthetics in the February 20 issue of the TLS . He suggests that “Saito exposes to main dimensions of the embedded character of everyday aesthetic reactions”:

“First, they are highly context-dependent, in a way that responses to ark works – which are normally meant to be experienced as discrete, ‘framed’ objects, relatively isolated from a wider environment – generally are not. The smell that entices when wafting from the oven may disgust when used as a perfume; the decorations that look just right at Christmas seem vulgar at another time of year. Contexts as various as customs and traditions, surrounding physical environments, and culturally shared expectations can all shape, even determine, people’s aesthetic responses to everyday things and happenings . . . .

“Second, aesthetic reactions may at once mirror and influence people’s wider values and their attitudes to the ‘existential issues’ they confront. For example, our judgements on things as clean, messy, orderly, disorderly and the like are ‘intricately involved with our moral assessments’ of people. As Le Corbusier remarked, the clean house proclaims an ‘inner cleanliness’ and self-mastery on the part of its owners.”

In short, Saito thinks of “everyday aesthetics” not as a “hived off, dilettante pursuit” but as “an examination of judgments and responses that are thoroughly integrated with the larger conduct of human life.” As she says, “neglected dimensions of our aesthetic life . . . often affect and sometimes determine our worldview, actions, the character of a society, the physical environment, and quite literally the course of history.”